The Boone Fly Café is a good choice when looking for casual dining when visiting wineries in the Carneros wine region. It is just about the only casual choice unless you want to head into to the town of Sonoma or Napa to find a good lunch spot. The Boone Fly is located in the Carneros Inn. This inn reopened a couple of years back and has become a very chic and fashionable place to lodge.

Getting to the Boone Fly Café can be difficult if approaching it on Highway 121 heading east. The Boone Fly is the big red barn structure and as soon as you see it you will need to turn left. There is a left turn area, but it is much too dangerous to approach from this spot. A better choice is to enter at the stop signal at Highway 121 and Old Sonoma Road and park near the lobby of the Inn. Then walk about 400 yards to the Boone Fly.

On the inside the café is very cozy. As you walk in the door, straight head is the open kitchen with cooks furiously making good food. To the left is a cool looking bar where you can drink and eat, and to the right is the main dining area, open, spacious, and very inviting.

We ate lunch here after visiting a couple of Carneros wineries. The menu is varied with several good choices, including some delicious flatbread with various toppings. The wine list is good, except for the wines by the glass; they could use a few more choices. Both our meals were terrific, a juicy large hamburger and a tasty flatbread with blah and blah. Service was good and relaxed.

The Caneros Inn is quite the spot or so it seems. The Inn is nearly full during the week and on weekends; forget about it unless you book ahead. The Carneros Inn is an expensive place to stay, but the Boone Fly is a comparatively good bargain for meals for guests and outside visitors.

The Good: Cool place, looks like it just has to be fun.
The Bad: Terrible left turn to get to the Boone Fly.

The Robledo Family Winery is a Carneros winery located at the Sonoma end of the Carneros region, on Bonness Road. It is really off the beaten path. You would never spot it unless you had set out to get there.

The great thing about this winery is that it is the first Mexican family-owned winery in Sonoma County. It is a story of one’s hard work and dedication to make something of himself and provide for his family. Reynaldo Rebledo migrated here from Mexico in 1968 and began learning the winery trade from the ground up. He started out in the vineyards as a farm worker. Over the years he became an expert at vineyard management. In the mid 1990’s the family formed a Vineyard management company and made its first major purchase of 30 acres of prime vineyards in the Carneros region. Shortly thereafter, the Robledo family began to produce its acclaimed estate wines. Today, it is a family affair with Reynaldo and children managing vineyards, selling grapes, and making delicious wine.

The tasting room is decorated in Mexican style and feels very relaxed and homey. Tasting fees are in effect here in an unusual manner. For $5 you can taste a flight of whites wines or a flight of red wines, not both. For $10, you can taste the reserve wines. The pours are generous and the wines are very exciting. The reserve Merlot and Cabernet are both outstanding.

There are plans to build a larger tasting facility and improve the grounds. The family also owns vineyards in Lake County and the Alexander Valley of Sonoma County. Most of their fruit is sold off to other wineries.

To get to Robledo, get onto Arnorld Road, towards Glen Ellen at the big Intersection at Highway 121 and Arnold Drive. Drive approximately one mile and turn left on East Bonness Road. Make a right on Bonness Road.

The Good: Hard work pays off. Delicious and well-structured wines.
The Bad: Tasting fee.

If you are hanging out in the town of Calistoga you might think about taking a day trip to check out a few wineries in Sonoma County. This is an easy drive along Highway 128 and perhaps one of the most beautiful roads in California wine country. The drive is about 25 miles from Calistoga to Sonoma County’s wine destination town of Healdsburg.

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Frank Family Winery is one of the busiest wineries in the Napa Valley but a very fun place to visit. During our visit, there was a constant stream of people wandering in and out of the winery. And this, mind you, was on a Monday. The winery is the site of former historic Larkmead Winery and then most recently the Kornell Champagne Cellars, one of the first sparkling wine makers in the Valley. The owner of Frank Family Winery is former Disney exec, Rich Frank. Frank purchased the Kornell winery a few years back and has purchased vineyards in the Rutherford area of the Valley.

The entire tasting is very well orchestrated. We are greeted and then summoned to a corner area where we sample the Frank Family sparkling wines. They make sparkling wine the old fashioned way here, by hand riddling the bottles of aging bubbly. Following a delightful tasting we are ushered into another room where we taste Frank white and red wines. Our host is well skilled and adept at serving the crowded room of 30 or so visitors. His message as he pours is that Frank Family Winery is different from most Napa wineries. “We don’t care about what we look like, we just care about how our wines taste.” Indeed, there is nothing fancy about the tasting room. It is very non Napa Valley like. It is rustic, old, and somewhat on the shabby side. And, yes the wines are quite good, especially the Chardonnays and the Cabernets. It is obvious that the winery gimmick is the no frills approach and the no tasting fee policy or high pressure sales pitch. People feel good about being here and we think that attracts the scores of visitors.

The winery is located on Larkmead Lane, a road that crosses the valley from Highway 29 to Silverado Trail. Larkmead Lane is about four miles north of St. Helena.

The Good: No tasting fee, excellent tasting lineup of wines and sparkling wines
The Bad: Lots of visitors in small areas.